


Bookworm

by Ishti



Series: Mu11berry's Winter Exchange Gift [1]
Category: Aveyond
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 01:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14226546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishti/pseuds/Ishti
Summary: Part 1 of my 2017-2018 Winter Exchange submission for Mu11berry!





	Bookworm

_Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep._

Rhen’s eyes were fixed on the inn ceiling. They stung. She didn’t blink.

_Go to sleep. Everything is fine._

She’d drawn a short straw that evening, so she was lying on her bedroll on the wooden floor of the attic suite. Lars and Elini snored on the beds to either side. She could hear her blood pounding in her ears. For the briefest of seconds, her eyes flicked to the space under Lars’ bed. She could see straight through to Galahad on the other side.  _What was I expecting?_

Rhen glanced to the other side. Her view under Elini’s bed was obstructed by her own pack. She traveled tidily, all of her belongings snug in their place, always put away immediately after use--with one exception.

A well-loved, hard-backed book with a fraying linen cover, its inscription (“THE GLIMMERING by Esteban Prince”) faded by sunlight and wear, its bulk bearing the creases of generations of dog-ears, lay tented between pages 104 and 105 beside Rhen’s travel pillow.

She flared her nostrils.  _Everything is fine._

Maybe she shouldn’t end each day on the road reading from a thriller novel about a haunted inn.

_Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go--_

A mouse squeaked at the far end of the room, and before she even realized what she was doing, Rhen jumped into a low crouch atop her bedroll, clutching the knife she kept under her pillow, her knuckles white.

The moment passed. An anxious shiver pressed Rhen back down onto her knees. She dropped the knife, which clattered bluntly against the floor, and hugged herself around her arms. Her heart was racing as she struggled to slow her hyperventilation.  _This is ridiculous. This is so ridiculous. This is completely, absolutely, entirely, abjectly--_

“Rhen.”

She jumped again and curled into herself reflexively. It was just Dameon; Rhen knew his voice instantly, but her muscles were already tense. He’d sat up in his bedroll at the foot of Lars’ bed, his shoulders wrapped in a blanket, and he was looking at her with a troubled brow and a concerned pout.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

That didn’t mollify Dameon. He crawled from his bedroll to sit on the end of her own. She gulped--it was dark, but she caught peeks of his bare chest under the blanket, and she was reminded that druids spent much of their lives not only in spiritual tutelage but in physical training as well. In her opinion, no white mage had any business sporting pectorals so… developed. He wrapped the blanket closer, modestly obscuring her view of his toned torso, and fixed his eyes on hers.

“It’s not normal to leap to attention at the sound of a mouse in the middle of the night,” he murmured, keeping his honey-and-cinnamon voice low to avoid waking their neighbors. “What’s wrong?”

Rhen stuffed the knife back under her pillow with one hand and, using her foot, tried her hardest to slide the book further under Elini’s bed without attracting Dameon’s notice. “Nothing,” she whispered, a little sharper than intended. “Please go back to sleep; we have a long day ahead tomorrow.”

Dameon’s full lips twitched to the side, and Rhen’s eyes followed them. She couldn’t look at his face without her gaze snapping to those lips. She yearned to touch them, to know how they’d feel against her own, and she hardly cared whether he knew.

“The group is only as strong as its leader,” Dameon reminded her, “and our leader needs her rest.”

Rhen sighed through her nose. “I’ll get it. Far sooner if you lay back down and leave me be.”

“You can’t sleep, Rhen.”

“Like the Underworld I can’t!”

“No one could sleep carrying so much tension in their shoulders.” Dameon leaned against one arm, angling his body toward her.

Rhen felt herself growing warmer. “It was nothing. I… I was falling asleep, and I had a sort of nightmare. That’s all.”

She didn’t expect Dameon to lean forward against both arms, baring his entire sculpted torso as he reached under Elini’s bed and grabbed “The Glimmering” off the floor. He held it up and waved it at her. “You were reading horror before bed,” he confirmed.

_Dung._  “Yes.”

He sat up again, placing the book gently by the side of her bedroll closest to his. “Why would you do that?”

Rhen felt hot as a forge. “I… I’ve been meaning to read it,” she said, empty of excuses.

“Esteban Prince is a fantastic author, but you know his thrillers are meant to keep you awake at night.”

She was taken aback. “Wait. You read Esteban Prince?”

He chuckled. “Of course. He’s a classic.”

“Really?”

“‘The Red Furlong’ is my favorite, but I think ‘The Vapor’ is his best work.”

“I love ‘The Vapor’!” Rhen’s eyes were wide. “I thought the open ending with Davio was brilliant.”

“Prince really burst through the confines of his genre.”

Rhen’s pulse had slowed a little, but still beat heartily with excitement. She sat forward, legs folded beneath her. The shiver lifted from her shoulders as she spoke with Dameon, allowing her exuberance to take over in full force. “That’s why I like him so much,” she whispered, eyes sparkling. “He doesn’t care a whit for genre.”

“But I can tell his writing makes you anxious,” warned Dameon. “You oughtn’t read Prince before going to sleep--and you especially shouldn’t read ‘The Glimmering’ in an _inn!_  What possessed you to do that?”

“I… don’t know.” Rhen rubbed her arms again, the chill suddenly back to trouble her skin. “Maybe that wasn’t smart.”

Dameon’s face softened, or perhaps it was the light. He drew forward, the blanket trailing behind him, an afterthought. Rhen could hardly see him through her jittering nerves, but suddenly, he was directly in front of her, his chin an inch from her forehead. She looked up.

Gods… he was far too beautiful for a priest.

Almost absently, he stroked a hand down the back of her head, his fingers weaving through her hair.

He broke her gaze, then, and pivoted on his knees to sit beside her. Rhen exhaled a shallow breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Dameon wrapped his blanket around his arms and, chaste as could be, draped one arm over her shoulder, softly cloaking her hunched back. He drew close until she could feel him against her ribcage, removed by just a meager layer of fabric.

It was only then that she realized she’d been shaking.

She shrunk into his embrace, leaning her head against his shoulder, and he held her just a little tighter, almost as if he didn’t want to admit to himself that he wanted her close. He always played the perfect gentleman, staying just shy of courting her, yet attracting her attention all the same. This night, however, she realized as she sat with him that his reticence to draw near felt less calculated and more… cautious, timid, like the hesitance of a child with his first crush. There was a human uncertainty here she’d never expected of Dameon. It made her want to pull in close, to run her hands over his chest and tell him she wanted everything he wanted, too.

But she was still shaking, and the rest of their party slept around them, and sometimes it was too hard to forget just how afraid she felt. She leaned her weight against him and allowed herself to tremble until the fear was gone.


End file.
